[aerzen]

If anyone is interested in improvements to SQL, checkout PRQL https://github.com/prql/prql, a pipelined relational query language.

It supports:

- functions,

- using an alias in same `select` that defined it,

- trailing commas,

- date literals, f-strings and other small improvements we found unpleasant with SQL.

https://lang.prql.builders/introduction.html

The best part: it compiles into SQL. It's under development, though we will soon be releasing version 0.2 which would be "you can check it out"-version.

[lijogdfljk]

This is neat. Have you found this new found capability at odds with "good SQL"? Eg, i run a fairly large application that has a huge DB schema, and more often than not when the SQL gets huge and ugly it often means we're asking too much of the DB. "Too much" being more easy to run into poor indexes, giving more chances for it to pull in unexpectedly large number of rows, etc.

My fear with PRQL is that i'd more easily ask too much of the DB, given how easy it looks to write larger and more complex SQL. Thoughts?

[aljazmerzen]

That's true - when you hit 4th CTE you are probably doing something wrong.

But not always. Some analytical queries may actually need such complexity. Also, during development, you would sometimes pick only first 50 rows before joining and grouping, with intention of not overloading the db. To do this you need a CTE (or nested select), but in PRQL you just add a `take 50` transform to the top.